DISCLAIMER - Highlander and its characters is the copyright of Rysher
and Panzer/Davis Productions and no infringement is intended. I don't know
who owns Medics and Alex Taylor, but they don't seem to be doing anything
with them at the moment, so... The story, such as it is, is copyright Karen
Colohan February 2001.

NOTES - This story is a crossover between Highlander and Medics, a
series from 1990/91 in which Peter Wingfield played Alex Taylor, a medical
student who makes something of an error of judgement right before he's due
to take his finals. He then runs away and ends up working on a building site.
I couldn't help wondering what might have happened if he'd met a certain
Watcher/researcher during that period of time and how that might have influenced
his subsequent decision to resume his medical studies...

LAZARUS

by Karen Colohan

London, summer 1991

The pub was busy with the lunch-time crowd in - an unlikely mixture of office
workers in pristine suits and labourers from the nearby building site in
dusty overalls. No one seemed to take much notice of the sign forbidding
hard hats and work clothes - the extra business was too welcome.

Negotiating the crush at the bar to get served required persistence and a
certain amount of nifty footwork. It was almost inevitable that the occasional
collision would occur.

"Excuse me..."

"Oh, I'm sorry..."

Two voices rose in simultaneous apology as the young man turning away from
the bar, drink in hand, bumped into another who was trying to move towards
it through the press of bodies. As the two men got a good look at one another,
each did a double-take. Apart from their clothing - one was clad in jeans,
sweatshirt and a long, lightweight coat while the other was in overalls and
clutching a hard hat - they could have been mirror images.

"My God!" muttered the man in labourer's garb, looking his counterpart up
and down in frank astonishment.

"Well, hardly," observed the other with a disarming grin, "but still, it
is uncanny..." He laughed, a pleasant sound. "It's certainly something you
don't see every day - except in a mirror. Adam Pierson," he added, offering
his hand.

"Alex Taylor," the other replied, grasping the outstretched hand and shaking
it.

"Can I buy you a drink?" asked Adam. "It seems the least I can do after trying
to knock you over. Besides, how often am I going to run into someone who
looks as if he could be my long-lost brother?"

"Well..." Alex looked uncertain.

"Go on, live dangerously," Adam urged with a smile, though a less
threatening-looking individual than the floppy-haired, hazel-eyed young man
was hard to imagine. "At any rate, we should probably get out of the way
before we get trampled underfoot."

It was true that the crush at the bar seemed to be getting worse, and Alex
had been intending to get himself a drink. Where was the harm in it? And
the other man's physical likeness to him was intriguing to say the least.
He nodded.

"OK, thanks - guess I still have some time on my lunch break."

"You work around here?" Adam asked as he turned back to the bar.

"Yeah, the site across the street. Just doing a bit of labouring to fill
in time," Alex answered.

Eventually Adam managed to attract the barmaid's attention again and bought
another beer. He handed it to Alex and they carefully negotiated their way
through the throng to a quieter corner of the pub. They found a recently
vacated table and sat down, pushing the empty glasses out of their way. Each
of them covertly studied the other as they sipped their beers.

"Forgive me for saying so, but you don't really look as if you'd have made
labouring on a building site your first career choice," ventured Adam, to
break the slightly uncomfortable silence between them. "You taking a year
out after uni or something?"

Alex shook his head. "No, I didn't," he said shortly. His expression immediately
became more guarded.

"Oh?" prompted Adam casually.

"It's a long story - very messy - you really don't want to hear it," sighed
Alex. He suddenly seemed to find his beer utterly fascinating, avoiding Adam's
questioning gaze.

Adam was well aware it was none of his business - he'd only just met Alex
after all - but, all the same, he found himself wanting to know what the
other man's story was. Maybe it was the unmistakable tinge of regret he could
hear in Alex's voice that prompted his curiosity. After all, Adam Pierson
aka Methos, the world's oldest Immortal, was intimately acquainted with the
consequences of living with one's regrets. He knew how they could eat away
at your soul if you locked them up and let them fester. Then again, perhaps
it was simply the novelty of seeing this stranger wearing his face that piqued
his interest. Either way, Adam found he wanted to keep Alex talking.

"I'm a good listener..." he offered at last.

Looking up, Alex measured the sincerity of his companion's offer. Evidently,
what he saw in Adam's face reassured him because he gave a resigned shrug,
muttering, "If you're sure."

"I'm sure," agreed Adam with a faint smile. "So, what was the first career
choice?"

"Medicine," said Alex softly, and now the tones of regret were even more
apparent. "I never wanted to do anything else. And I was good at it."

Adam frowned. "What went wrong then? Trouble with exams...?"

"You could say that." Alex snorted derisively. "I didn't turn up for my finals.
All that work, the effort I'd put in... I threw it all away because of one
moment of weakness. I couldn't handle it, so I packed up and left - and here
I am."

"But why? What do you mean - 'one moment of weakness'?" Adam was genuinely
curious.

"Right before my exams I made a spectacularly bad error of judgement - just
about as bad as it gets." Alex looked down into his glass, as if seeking
answers in the amber liquid.

"And now you regret it?" Adam prompted.

"The mistake I made? Or leaving?" Alex's voice was tinged with bitterness.

"Well, it sounds to me as if you have regrets about both," observed Adam.

"Yeah, I guess I do," admitted Alex sadly.

"Did you ever think about going back?" Adam asked. It was clear to him that
the other man was just marking time, drifting without any real sense of
direction. It seemed a damn shame - mortal lives were all too short as it
was, without wasting the best years of them. "Couldn't you resit your finals?"

"It's not that simple." Alex shook his head with a sigh. "What I did..."

"Did someone die because of your mistake?" Adam hazarded. From his own experience
with the medical profession he could see how that might have destroyed the
young man's confidence in his abilities, but Alex was shaking his head again.

"Oh no, it was nothing like that," he assured Adam. "What I did was morally
wrong."

"Ah, ethics..." Adam sat back in his chair, a wry smile on his face. Yes,
he knew all about doing things which ran counter to accepted moral standards.

"Yes, exactly," said Alex, eyeing the other man carefully. "What I did violated
the Hippocratic Oath. I didn't deserve to be a doctor after that."

"You judge yourself very harshly, it seems to me," Adam said softly. He caught
and held the other man's gaze. "What did you do? What was so terrible that
you ran away from it and haven't stopped running yet?"

"I slept with a patient." There was a startling depth of self-loathing in
the bald statement of fact.

Adam's eyebrows raised. Well, that certainly hadn't been what he'd expected.
And clearly there was more to it than that - Alex's voice gave that away.
He didn't want to push too hard - it wasn't as if he had the right - but
he hoped Alex would tell him the rest of it. If ever there was an ideal candidate
for a crash course in the Methosian art of putting the past behind you and
getting on with life, Alex was it. He seemed to be doing a great job of running
away and not dealing with what had happened - which was OK, if you had the
potential to live forever, but wasn't so good if you only had a mortal span
of years. Adam found he didn't like the idea of this particular young man
wasting his life. So...

"And?" he prompted gently.

"And nothing." Alex shrugged, but his casual attitude was too studied to
fool Adam. "If I did it once I could easily be tempted again. It was better
for everyone that I left."

"For everyone but you," Adam reminded him.

"I don't get a vote on this one," insisted Alex.

"Tell me what actually happened," said Adam encouragingly. There had to be
more to it than that.

"Indulge me...?" Adam contrived his most winsome smile, drawing an exasperated
sigh from the other man. "So, she was your patient? I thought you said you
hadn't taken your finals."

Alex sighed again, this time in resignation. "I was sitting in on her sessions
- she was seeing a psychiatrist, had all kinds of problems. For some reason
she latched onto me, called me at home in a real state. I knew she'd tried
to commit suicide once... I was worried, so I went to her place. She'd been
drinking - she said her husband had been there and had hurt her... She
practically launched herself at me... Christ! Why am I telling you all this?"

"Because you need to talk to someone about it - and I happen to be here and
willing to listen," said Adam softly. "Go on..."

Alex nodded, albeit unwillingly. "At the time I thought I'd be doing her
more harm if I refused her advances. From what I knew her husband had hit
her; she already felt worthless. If I rejected her... Well, whatever the
rights and wrongs after the fact, I did sleep with her. Of course, the whole
thing was stupid on my part, crazy - and I was wrong. I wasn't helping; I
was using her, just like all the others before me. I should have been strong
enough to say no."

"It's easy to blame yourself with the benefit of hindsight," said Adam sternly.
"But 'if onlys' will just drive you mad. You have to learn from the experience
and then let it go - move on."

"That's easy enough for you to say," muttered Alex bitterly.

"No, not really." Adam shook his head. "It's not something that ever gets
any easier, but you do learn to cope with it better - over time."

"Listen to you!" Alex protested. "You're hardly older than I am and here
you are giving me the benefit of your extensive experience."

"I'm older than I look," replied Adam dryly. If only the kid knew...

"Right," said Alex sceptically.

"Trust me..."

"... you're a doctor," Alex interrupted him sarcastically. "Yeah, I've heard
that one before. I might even have thought it was funny - once."

"Actually, I am a doctor - well, I was..." admitted Adam in a moment of candour.
"Though my skills could probably use a little updating now."

"You must have drunk more than I thought," snorted Alex derisively. "You're
crazy - you're too young to have been out of the profession long enough to
get rusty. You barely look old enough to have qualified."

"I told you, I'm older than I look," insisted Adam. He could sense the other
man pulling back into himself, withdrawing from the tentative rapport they'd
begun to build. He cursed his own ineptitude.

"Yeah, I heard you when you said it the first time," agreed Alex. "Look,
thanks for the drink and everything. I don't usually dump all my problems
on someone the first time I meet them. Then again, it's not every day you
get to meet your doppelganger."

It was clearly intended to put an end to the conversation, but Adam found
he wasn't ready to give up on this troubled young man - who walked around
wearing his face - quite so easily.

"No, you're right, it's not," he agreed smoothly. "So, feel free to turn
me down, but... well, would you like to go for a meal or something one evening.
If you don't have other plans, of course..."

"You live around here, then?" asked Alex.

"At the moment, yeah. I'm renting a place," Adam told him. "I'm working on
some research... Look -" Hurriedly Adam scribbled his number on a beer mat
and held it out to the other man. "Here's my number. If you're at a loose
end, give me a call."

After a moment's hesitation Alex took the beer mat and pocketed it. Then
he stood up and retrieved his hard hat. He looked down at Adam, who was watching
him expectantly. The uncanny resemblance struck him all over again, and a
faint shiver ran through him as two identical pairs of hazel eyes met and
locked for a moment.

"All right, maybe I will," he conceded. "But now I really have to
go. Thanks again."

With that Alex turned and hurried away, fighting his way through the crowd
still filling the pub.

Methos looked after him with a speculative gleam in his eyes. There was no
denying it - Alex Taylor intrigued him, and not many people had done that
in recent times. Perhaps this trip to London was going to turn out to be
more interesting than the old Immortal had thought it would.

**********

London, several days later

Methos sprawled comfortably across the couch in his rented flat. He was
surrounded by the newest batch of Watcher journals he'd managed to unearth.
Some of them were very old and he was deeply absorbed in trying to translate
the archaic language. He'd known the Immortal these particular journals referred
to quite well and he was curious to find out if he himself rated a mention.

When the phone rang, breaking the silence, Methos frowned. Who knew he was
here? He briefly considered just letting it ring, but his concentration was
already broken; he might as well find out who it was. He reached out a hand.
lifting the phone from its cradle. Distractedly - another intriguing passage
had just caught his eye - he answered.

"Hello."

"Hello... is that Adam Pierson?" the person at the other end asked tentatively.

"Yeah, who...?" Methos began to ask, but suddenly realised that the voice
on the phone was unmistakable - the twin of his own. All at once he sat up
straight, paying proper attention to the conversation. "Alex? Is that you?
Hi, I was starting to think you wouldn't call." Methos allowed genuine warmth
and the hint of a question to colour his tone.

A faint, slightly nervous laugh greeted his words. "So was I. Not sure why
I did really, but... Well, you said maybe we could meet, talk... Look, perhaps
I'm way out of line here, but - you seemed to understand. You know..."

Methos could hear the tension in Alex's voice, a faint note of - something.
It was clear that the other man needed someone to talk to. Methos guessed
that was a luxury Alex hadn't had of late. And if there was anyone around
who knew what it was like to have to deal with life- changing events on one's
own... Well, Methos considered himself a master of that particular art. And
he still felt a strange pull towards his young doppelganger. Maybe he could
do something to help, something that would stop Alex throwing his life away,
working on building sites, when he clearly had the potential to do so much
more.

"Yeah, maybe I do," he said finally, breaking the long silence. "Are you
doing anything tonight?"

"No - nothing planned." There was a wry twist to Alex's voice as he added,
"Actually, I don't seem to have anything planned most nights. All my friends..."

He didn't need to continue. Methos could deduce the situation from the unspoken
words. Everyone Alex knew and cared about had been left behind, together
with the existence he'd walked away from so abruptly.

Methos didn't dwell on the thought any further. He simply offered, "OK, why
don't we meet for a drink then - say 7:30."

"Where?" Alex seized on the invitation.

"You know The Founders?" Methos asked, trying to remember the nearest pub
which actually stayed open after the City workers deserted the place for
the day.

"Down by the river, yeah, I know it," Alex agreed.

"I'll see you there, then."

"OK, 7:30... and thanks."

Listening to the clear note of gratitude in Alex's voice, Methos paused before
he spoke again. "I'm looking forward to it."

And, strangely, Methos found that he genuinely was. The realisation left
him sitting, staring at the phone, for long minutes after he replaced the
receiver.